


When You Can't Run

by SunnyD_lite



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen, Tag to the Message
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-08
Updated: 2007-12-08
Packaged: 2017-10-07 17:39:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/67547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunnyD_lite/pseuds/SunnyD_lite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jayne takes on philosophy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When You Can't Run

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I am the almighty Joss, beware my wrath. Umm I mean I did not create these characters or this universe. Joss said go playth, and here I play!  
> Prompt was Crawl whatelse would I write

Mal was not hiding in his room. Was just they'd laid in a course and no sense in ruffling Wash's feathers with hovering. Plus a man needed time to his lonesome now and again.

Burying Tracey earlier that day had no bearing on his current actions.

But Zoe knew him too well. As he knew her, and he showed no surprise when a knock on his cabin door revealed his Second along with a bottle that some might consider alcohol.

"Medicinal purposes, sir."

He let her in.

She settled, leaning against the wall across from his bunk, and poured three shot glasses full of the amber-ish liquid. There were traditions to follow, even if it had been a while since they'd last observed them. Even if they were the only ones who could.

She handed him one, as he sat upon the bed. "Tracey," was all she said.

Two glasses were raised and emptied and refilled. The third sat on the floor, waiting.

A ritual inherited from those who'd gone before. As he fought to swallow the next shot, he wondered if there would be any to remember him this way when he'd found his bullet.

"What is this rot-gut?"

"Some things are best unknown, sir."

There were wakes, with the telling of tales. This weren't one of them one, being more of a silent ritual. After the Valley, there had been too many dead and too few alive. Tracey had been dead, then alive, with all the blessings and faults that that fact implied. He'd become real again, and his final death formed a reminder of all those who'd passed before. Some wounds are always too close to the surface.

A thud at the door almost caused Zoe to spill the next round. That was an oddity in itself. But that thought was chased by the clamoring of Cobb, pounding on his door. Trust Jayne to sniff out an open bottle.

"Thought you two might be getting all misty-eyed over that parcel of trouble. Never did quite catch that crawling thing he kept saying."

He hadn't invited Jayne in, he was quite sure of that. Yet he was loathed to use the effort needed to make him leave. A glance at Zoe showed that she'd defer to his judgment.

"When you can't run anymore, you crawl, and when you can't do that, you find someone to carry you." It had been drummed into the Brown Coats, along with forced marches and target practice. You didn't leave your team. Your team didn't leave you.

"And that's a load of useless. Don't see no percentage in waiting on someone to pick you up." Jayne reached for the glass on the floor.

Zoe's arm intercepted him. "You skipped the war. Don't talk about what you don't understand." There was a sharpness to Zoe's tone, shiny and biting like the blade of a good knife. A warning in both word and deed.

Jayne, being Jayne, ignored it.

"Alls I see is what that war makes ya stupid. Lining up to get killed, for piss poor wages if you live long enough to collect. That Tracey kid, from all your chatting he never pulled his own weight any which way but into the gosit, and then he'd be dragging you along with."

Mal stayed seated, but watched Zoe's grip on her glass grow tighter.

Jayne picked up the bottle and took a swig. "What's the sense in that the weak should get carried? Only slows down them that can. Like today, last thing we need is facing off with crooked law types."

"Your lips are still moving; that's not a wise thing for them to be doing right now." Zoe used the tone that he seen officers quake at, even them generally without a clear understanding their own good.

The liquid must be more potent than he'd thought; Jayne just kept talking.

"What? This here crew has the right idea. Those that do the work get the pay. Like with Ariel. Doc came up with a good idea, only right he get his share."

Mal pushed off the bed. "You really don't want to be reminding me of Ariel right now. I made a decision after that job. I could always rethink that."

The color drained from Jayne's face, although that could be a reaction to what was in the bottle. Did go far to explain how Jayne got so stupid during that job. If there was no give or take, ebb and flow between the team, then he'd best watch the merc on any central world where the lure of easy money might undo years of team work.

Zoe glanced at him, knowing that there was some critical fact he'd neglected to tell her. Oft times that look was enough to unlock his lips, but Jayne's offence had been too serious to be bandied about. Plus he'd given his word.

"War did throw like and unlike together, that is a fact. But what war also did was something I thought we'd done here. You can get off this boat whenever you want, and it sounds like you're wanting too. Course, there is your brother's damplung to think on." Might have been a tad underhanded, but if Jayne was sending money home, he already understood the saying. He just hadn't applied it wide enough.

"Hmm sad to say, this sorry dump is the best offer right now."

Did Mal imagine the emphasis on the last words? After five shots from that bottle, imagining pink cattle might be in realm of the possible. But given that Zoe was now standing, he didn't think so.

"You best be watching your words there." He moved to get between the others. Not that he hadn't felt like pummelling the man of his own accord, but he really wasn't in the mood to get blood stains out of his linens, and that was as likely an outcome as any other right now.

"Fine. Not like I'd been leaving that great a party. I'm thinking Zoe swapped that fuel Kaylee has been mixing up with something to drink. Still say that crawling thing gave me the creeps."

With that deep philosophical remark, Jayne staged a retreat. Leaving him, Zoe, an almost empty bottle and the glass for the dead.


End file.
